Pressure mounts on Rodney

by Cameron Slater on April 25, 2011 at 7:56pm

As one of the longest established bloggers in New Zealand I have been surprised at the huge amount of information coming through the tip line since Tracy Watkins article in Saturday’s Dominion Post on Don’s challenge of Rodney’s leadership. It has been a flood, and there is massive resentment of Rodney for his destruction of the ACT Party.

Aside from just about every commentator telling Rodney to leave the surprising thing is just exactly how out of touch Rodney is with the ACT board. Apparently he hasn’t talked to many of them for months, and he has ignored their advice for far to long to have their support. Word is he is currently in his bunker with three trusted advisors and not taking calls from senior ACT party members or donors in case they tell him to resign. All sorts of conspiracy theories abound, some of them even including me working for Matthew Hooton! Every one knows Hooton doesn’t pay.

The difficulty for Rodney is having been caught out badly for being a hypocrite, and for not delivering the kind of economic policies ACT stood for in the past, he no longer has the confidence of the membership. The tipline is saying he is struggling to find a reason why the ACT board should retain him, as he has been tracking at the margin of error for so long that no one can remember the last time he was polling well. ACTs board are reminding themselves their loyalty is to the party, not to any individual.

The media are doing no favours to Rodney, not even running adequately his half hearted attacks on Don. My media sources tell me that they are about to go from negative to feral, as Rodney has been exceptionally economical with the truth around his negotiations with Don about his leadership discussions including list positions, a co-leadership agreement and portfolios. This could really hurt Rodney’s chances of surviving a board vote as he kept the board in the dark about the negotiations as well.

Unconfirmed sources are suggesting that Rodney is due back into the mythical smoke filled room where the real power behind ACT is going to suggest he resigns immediately or there will be a lot of utu. Rodney is not the most employable bloke in the world. In the event he loses his seat and kills off ACT his employability gets close to nil, and this point is going to be reinforced strongly.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. And when he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet, and as a result he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist that takes no prisoners.